Just By Being Here
by Moosashi
Summary: She would watch, but never intervene. She would guide, but never by the hand. She would empower, but never ask for it in return. For all that she did, it earned her the right to keep one tiny, harmless little secret. One she'd swear never to speak of, but one she'd never be able to contain.


A.N. Upon revisiting select scenes in this game, as well as with the anime's help, it's come even more apparent than when I first played through it that Tales of Zestiria is an intricately-woven tale. And here we have a look upon one thread of that tale from a different angle. Or maybe it's two threads twisted together, like Lailah and Sorey are.

* * *

1.

She remembers night as a time of stillness. Things rest, rejuvenate for the day ahead. Peaceful.

And yet it's far more animated than the shrine. Perhaps she's…out of the loop. Some of the stars above twinkle, few through clouds stretched thin that float along, and the trees all rustle in tune to incessant insects. _Hmm, well, thousands of days cooped up could do that to a seraph._

But she's content—far more so than she'd ever been alone in the shrine. The turmoil of days and days and days of waiting and waiting and waiting for someone—but not just anyone—to reach out to her, to take her hand. She was not unlike one of the fair princesses in her fantasies, a damsel in distress to be rescued. Except there were people. Daily, even. Thousands of faces she'd seen, thousands of voices she'd heard. And not one she could answer, able only to watch and listen from beyond a mirrored wall that never truly existed.

A prince did come, only he isn't one. Chivalry hadn't fallen from grace—he had. A loafer, in a sense, whose wide eyes yet remain polished and gleaming in absence of the suspicious dulling that experience brings. Through those he will view the world, and through her own she'll watch him do so.

But for now, his eyes only watch the dancing of fire on a ritual blade. With a white cloth already in need of washing he wipes it down, bits of ash sticking to and smearing across the fabric.

And so she continues to watch, content in something that just days ago had her sinking into the tarry depths of despair.

* * *

2.

Tonight he is exhausted.

She'd been the first to know, of course—to know that he had pushed too hard against those Hellions. The shoddy camp proves it further: the spilt belongings where he had dropped everything, the crumpled mat he bothered not to roll out all the way before collapsing onto. Her earth and water kin had gathered the firewood she then set ablaze, the former giving grievances in having to do so, despite procuring far more than the water seraph.

The night is bright, a resplendent moon bathing all in its ethereal glow. It brings a shine to the small alcove of trees they rest at, the water's still surface beyond wide but sparse trunks painted in dedicated portrait to the lunar majesty. It gives a luminosity to her skin, an otherworldliness that she once caught someone gawking at; it'd made her giggle. It gives highlight and gleam to strands of earthen hair not thin but full, that gets caught in her fingers rather than slipping between them.

She leans to reach further down from the rock she sits atop, to brush aside bangs concealing a tired but peaceful face. Fingertip touches cheek—

She jolts, hands coming together at her bosom. But then she reaches down and…

There's a reverberation of a string, and slowly she composes herself, brings her hands folded together again. Proper. Prim. Prim and proper. And she watches the earth seraph with umbrella twirling watch her, all the while the blonde breathes out a drawn, curious, "Oh~?"

* * *

3.

"You're being reckless!" she yells at him, and they're words she regrets never saying years ago filled with emotions bottled up for just as long. It shakes her, leaves on her palms deep marks from fists clenched tight. Her outburst has many shocked, but one with long white hair like her own turns away, and one pulls closer an umbrella.

"Lailah." The way her name comes from him, firm and without doubt, stiffens her. "This is the answer I've found." And she knows that. It's an answer she's waited to hear. "There's no other way." But not the one she wants to hear.

She grips her dress. _How can he be so selfish?_ To always insist on doing so even when, "You can't do it alone!" Her breath hitches.

It's slithering, encroaching, this feeling of constriction in the hollow recess where her heart should be. She wants to tell him of wondrous bees buzzing all around, wants to see his face light up in thought at that. No. That's not right. She wants to break that oath, submission to eternal damnation be damned itself. _But what's the point?_

Because she has no answer. The oath has no answer. There is no other answer.

He's right, after all.

* * *

4.

He strikes him, and in doing so strikes her.

It's piercing now, that feeling where her heart should be, and though it lasts only a moment before she and her kin are pried from the malevolent man's body, it leaves her winded and dazed. Her kin twirl in rising dance above her, tiny lights that are blown to the surface when she releases their pacts. Powers returned fully allows her just enough to materialize. And she does so behind him in a stumble as the low rumbling laugh of the malevolent man ceases.

Her body feels weightless as they touch, her collapsing into his back and wrapping arms weakly around him. He's perfectly still, save for chest rising and falling to restore lost breath. There's a myriad of thoughts coursing through him, she knows, but she insists in a trembling, confident whisper, "I won't let you shoulder this burden alone." _Maybe this is selfish,_ because the fate of the retainers are the same as the Shepherd and though she's sworn to uphold it, here she is fighting it.

The Lord of Calamity has passed on, and rising up before them is a holy dragon larger than any they've ever seen, something they know despite being unable to see it for far too blinding its aura is. So instead he focuses on and places his own atop her hand at his chest.

"Lailah." He holds tighter and steps forward with her. "I'm glad you're here."

* * *

A.N. Lailah reminds me of a doll—one of those fancy ones with all the frills and etiquette and prim n' properness. She's all bubbly and cheerful. Perfect at first glance. But there's a ton of angst being bottled up beneath that porcelain exterior.

The game gives glimpses into a regretful past for her surrounding the previous Shepherd, Michael. It's not vague enough to leave us in the dark, but it'd be cool to see more thoroughly just what happened between them.

So anyways…

Enjoy it? I hope so!


End file.
